From Sunlight to Sunlight

Yesterday the King Arthur Flour company offered two demonstrations at a hotel in town. I wanted to go to the artisan breads one in the evening but there was also a sweet breads one at noon. Husband heard about it and said, “Go. I’ll stay home with the kids and you go.”

So I went. A good time was had by all, as the little old lady writing the town gossip in my local weekly newspaper used to say. All the breads were made by real methods (not quickie, processed shortcuts), BUT they were all made with unbleached flour instead of whole grains. Oh well. I wish I could get a hands on especially about shaping loaves. And I have a few questions that don’t seem appropriate for most home bakers such as, “How to preserve the gluten envelope integrity while cutting loaves out of thirty pounds of dough?” That sort of thing. Since King Arthur’s “professional” classes cost $800 I doubt I’ll get to find out except by my own experimentation and trying to read about it. I did get a neat apron as a door prize! The apron that I didn’t get was from Red Star Yeast and said, “I knead to be loaved” which I find just seriously amusing. Breadmakers will inherit the earth.

Of course, husband did dishes while I was gone. Not as many as they used to eat on however, so today has been one of those kitchen sorts of days. And I really didn’t want to do it so I didn’t feel very self-actualized today. Not only that, but the inside temperature of the house topped out at 63 today. It will soon be time for a fire but not yet. Right now it just means more clothes (the kids all found their slippers!) and an evening bath to warm me up. And several times a day going outside to sit in the sun and absorb the warmth all the way to my bones.

Which will inevitably get me thinking about Tom Robbins’ first book, Another Roadside Attraction, and the ways in which we are all sunlight. "The wheat is sunlight, baked in sunlight, the cow ate sunlight, I need sunlight." A little too esoteric?

Well then, read this: I’m a recovering farmer over on the New Farm sight. He says, “So it was that I resolved to do nothing the same again. In the months following my epiphany I reasoned, ‘Why grow something and make nothing when I can grow nothing and make nothing.’"